Philosophy For Dummies (US Edition)

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Perhaps character is at the core of human good. At present, philosophers are digging more deeply into these issues than they have for a very long time, and new insights are coming to light. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976): The most thoroughly academic of the existentialists. His involvement with the Nazi party couldn’t stop his magnum opus from being one of the most influential books of the 20th century.

Putting the point in terms of Searle’s Chinese Room: the whole system might, in some sense, understand Chinese or produce responses that are about the questions; but, in Thomas Nagel’s famous phrase, there is nothing that “it is like” to be the Chinese Room. The whole system does not enjoy what it is doing, it does not experience sensations or emotions, and it does not feel pains or pleasures. But Searle himself does have experiences and sensations—he is a conscious being. So, the reasoning goes, even if functionalism works for intentional states, it does not work for consciousness. Many arguments for functionalism depend on the actuality or possibility of systems that have mental states but that are either physically or behaviorally distinct from human beings. These arguments are mainly negative arguments that aim to show that the alternatives to functionalism are unacceptable. For example, behaviorists famously held that psychological states are not internal states at all, whether physical or psychical. But, the argument goes, it is easy to imagine two creatures that are behaviorally indistinguishable and that differ in their mental states. This line of reasoning is one of a family of “perfect actor” or “doppelgänger” arguments, which are common fare in philosophy of mind: Another ancient skeptic was the physician Sextus Empiricus. Appropriately enough, we are uncertain of the place and date of his birth, the date of his death, and where he lived. He seems to have lived in the second half of the second century A.D. and into the first quarter of the third century. We think he was Greek because of his facility with the Greek language and apparent knowledge of places in the Greek world. His works have been very influential and are the best sources for the arguments and positions of classic Greek skepticism.Searle’s Chinese Room is a version of the “twin” or “doppelgänger” style objections to functionalism, in which some system is specified to be functionally isomorphic to a mental system, e.g., one that understands stories written in Chinese. Since functionalism holds that being is doing, two systems that do the same things (that is, that are functionally the same) should also be the same with respect to their mental states. But if Searle is correct, the system including the books and himself is functionally but not psychologically identical to a person who understands Chinese. And if so, this is incompatible with functionalism. Key works: The Blood of Others (1945), The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), The Second Sex (1949), The Mandarins (1954) The safest characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. — Alfred North Whitehead Chapter 3 The Love of Wisdom In This Chapter Philosophers want to know what the ultimate truth is about all of this, because it’s important. What are you, anyway, at the most basic level imaginable? Are you just a living body, or are you a soul or mind inhabiting a body? This is relevant to all sorts of further questions, such as whether human beings survive bodily death. And there are interesting arguments to consider on all sides if you want to uncover the final truth. In a well-known version of this argument, one imagines that there could be “Super-Spartans” who never exhibit pain behavior (such as flinching, saying “ouch”) or even any dispositions to produce pain behavior (Putnam 1963).

In addition, How Philosophy Workscovers a good range of philosophers, including the usual suspects Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, and so on. Everything is organized by theme (e.g. ‘mind and body’, ‘deconstruction’, etc.), which makes for easy reading that won’t clutter your mind. Here’s another and related conception of wisdom: It’s all about guidance and guardrails, used well. The guidance side of wisdom, like a GPS system, orients you and points the way forward in life. The guardrails then keep you from getting off the proper path and crashing in a bog. Like those metal railings on steep curvy mountain roads, the guardrails of wisdom protect from disaster those who respect them and stay on the right side of them.The 19th-century philosophical wild man, Friedrich Nietzsche, took it one more step and even went so far as to characterize philosophy as an explosive, in the presence of which everything is in danger. So, then, it really comes as no surprise to see Nietzsche’s predecessor, the English poet John Keats, asking, Do not all charms fly at the mere touch of cold philosophy? In this part, we look at what philosophy is. What did all those bearded guys in togas actually start? And how should we view the philosophical search for wisdom now? Chapter 1 Great Thinkers, Deep Thoughts In This Chapter One of the most important concepts in life is the idea of goodness. There is a deep natural tendency to judge and grade things — good, better, best, or bad, worse, and worst — and this habit of judgment seems vital for navigating the world safely and well. In ancient times, the famous Roman statesman and author Cicero complained, There is nothing so absurd that it hasn’t been said by some philosopher. Of course, he, too, was some philosopher. But what about the other human beings who bear that label? What’s our view of them? More fans of philosophy

Things have their seasons, and even certain kinds of eminence go in and out of style. But wisdom has an advantage: She is eternal. Whether you think you are just your body, or that you are something more than that is often closely tied to a broader question about the universe: Is there just one sort of fundamental substance in reality, like matter, or one-dimensional strings of energy out of which everything else is made, in all the wonderful diversity of the world? Or could there be more than one fundamental reality composing the wide variety of things?The enterprise of philosophy itself, philosophy as a genuine human activity, can and should be great. Not to mention the fact that philosophers can be our friends. On this topic, I should perhaps quote the great poet John Milton, who wrote: In one version or another, functionalism remains the most widely accepted theory of the nature of mental states among contemporary theorists. Nevertheless, in view of the difficulties of working out the details of functionalist theories, some philosophers have been inclined to offer supervenience theories of mental states as alternatives to functionalism. Table of Contents Design Arguments see features of our universe, such as its fundamental simplicity arising out of very few basic laws at bottom, or its intelligibility to science, or the fine-tuning of its laws and conditions within incredibly precise ranges to be indicators of intelligent design. The Cosmological Argument points to the strange fact that there is a universe at all and asks why, concluding that we must conclude there is a personal explanation, arising out of the choice of a personal agent or doer. Philosophers have tried to distinguish carefully between mere opinions, or beliefs, and trustworthy knowledge. Most have said that knowledge is something like properly justified, true belief.

In Philosophy For Dummies, 2nd Edition Dr. Tom Morris delivers a refreshing and engaging exploration of the fundamentals of philosophy and shows you that philosophy can be fascinating and fun at the same time. You’ll be introduced to topics like the meaning of life, religious belief, and ways to live in the most satisfying ways. You’ll also learn about the insights of some of history’s greatest philosophers.Ethical theory serves as the foundation for ethical solutions to the difficult situations people encounter in life. In fact, for centuries, philosophers have come up with theoretical ways of telling right from wrong and for giving guidelines about how to live and act ethically. Here are a few ethical theories to whet your appetite: The activities that a key does, could do, or is supposed to do may be called its functions. So one can say that keys are essentially things that have certain functions, i.e., they are functional entities. (Or the kind key is a functional kind.) Key works: Human, All too Human (1878–1880), The Gay Science (1882–1887), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1891), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), The Genealogy of Morals (1887), Ecce Homo (1888)